The present invention is related to accessorial belt-type sanding attachments for hand-held portable power drills. Examples of such sanding devices previously known to the art are exemplified by Asbury U.S. Pat. No. 2,483,720, Ruehle U.S. Pat. No. 2,538,044 and Werth U.S. Pat. No. 2,819,565.
Among the principal disadvantages of the known prior art devices are: (1) their inability to operate over relatively large planar surfaces while preventing the motor housing portion of the drill body from contacting the work piece without requiring that the hand-held drill be coupled to the sander indirectly via an intermediate system of pulleys, gears or other couplings; (2) a lack of provision for coupling the hand-held power drill directly to either side of the sander and permitting the operator to grasp the sander from a respective opposite side in a balanced fashion such that the sander and drill combination may be operated conveniently by either a right- or left-handed operator holding the sander in one hand and the drill in the other with the weight of the two devices distributed substantially equally between the two hands; (3) the use of a relatively large-area bearing plate positioned between the two belt-supporting rollers as backing support for the operative portion of the sanding belt, with the result that the drill motor driving the sander is easily overloaded as the sander is pressed against a work piece; and (4) a lack of provision for selectively mounting the sander and drill combination to a work table with the operative portion of the sanding belt oriented in either a horizontal or vertical position.